The Trial of the Chicago 7
... if you're any kind of poet or philosopher of the real culture of the Western USA, our personal crèche and current nesting place. If the ghosts of forgotten, diligent martyrs of The People shriek at your soul from the conformist offices of the brutal-capitalist conformist soul-grinding machine....
... if you have known true despair and utter powerlessness and your mind twists itself into some jagged Gordian glass-knot torture device for those whose entire existence is spent in that fragile nightmare-state and whose names we rarely even know – the jaw-dropping majority of whom never even are registered as significantly as moles of sodium in a beaker in some lab in North Korea...
... if you don't much enjoy films anymore because real life is much less tedious and dull than the tired squealings of the rusted-out gas-guzzler that is the Entertainment "Industry", but documentaries are always too hamfisted and done by half-educated nitwits with half-baked agendas and all the grace of a teenaged tomcat around a grizzled grand dame in heat....
... if you find most modern actors to be overtalented for the tedious drivel they are given and the limited, controlling imaginations of coke-fueled upper-management patriarchs which bind their wings are an infuriating and obvious impedence to your enjoyment of the advances in human endeavor beyond the 1950s (yes, Drama is a valid field, SHOW IT TO US.)...
... then we recommend parts of "The Trial of The Chicago 7" We think the acting is, of course, just all around top-notch. Olivia Wilde stands out in an incredibly minor role, as they always do. All of the main cast is remarkable, especially the antagonists. ...the screenplay itself is tedious and predictable, if one expects to have one's emotions jerked around one will definitely achieve catharsis with this film if one is at all interested in history, politics, or the human condition in the United States in the 21st century. On the same hand, this is the very thing that makes it relevant to current political paradigms and ideals being challenged in culture and society.
Our reservations for recommendation include the fact that it is very obviously and blatantly propaganda meant to profit off of the current cultural admiration for some of the values of previous, well-documented, well-regulated and controlled-release-of-information public representations of The Struggle at that time (the 1960s). We do not like that this film may be seen by some as an accurate reflection of real events, which is flawed not only factually but philsophically sppeaking, the difference between the map and the territory is a crucial axiom upon which we anchor a great many of our guiding morals and hence our overarching dialectic.
In short, no Revolution has been, nor will it ever be, televised. Every Revolution happens solely in the mind of the individual, like all sea changes save the sea their leviathan-loving self. But there are flags of certain colors in this film which many folk might find refreshing, certainly those with an interest in redacted histories.
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Author's note:
We may write a review written for a more general consumption at some point, but this was primarily us just enjoying writing our thoughts down about a film we just finished watching and was not intended really to be a review, not to begin with at least.
- Aick
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